Starting from a connection between Lisbon and Berlin, Inverted Landscapes recovers the life of two figures of Portuguese performing arts, who change geographical destinations in search of the same artistic goal: Ruth Aswin, a German, who came to dance in Portugal in the 1930s, and her student, Valentim de Barros, who flees to Berlin in search of work and freedom. Inverted Landscapes is thus a tribute to the uprooting link that was common to the two artists of the historiography of these two countries, as well as to the attentive perception of two ways of living that have always had more history than geography.

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The actor and director Pedro Penim was invited by Francisco Frazão and Lola Arias to develop a lecture / performance for Mis Documentos cycle.

Mis Documentos is a concept idealized by Argentine playwright and director Lola Arias and has a minimal format: an artist on stage with their documents. One way to make visible researches that are sometimes lost in an unnamed folder on the computer.

In DOING IT, Pedro Penimconfesses a secret passion that takes him very far across the sea of Internet. An innocent and obscure addiction that he never revealed before: his “island collection”. Pedro has been researching, collecting and systematizing information about several uninhabited and/or remote islands for a long time and this piece intends to stage a discourse that gives some clues about this interest in isolation, evasion and in the demarcation of space. In DOING IT, Pedro brings the spectators into the mind of someone who is constantly seeking and makes us think about our own obsessions. What do we do in secret on our computers when no one sees us?

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SuperNatural is a journey that begins in the frame and ends in the meme. The starting point is a painting by Magritte, “Le secret du cortège” (The secret of the procession) that the show not only looks as inhabits it, in the same way that a theater stage is inhabited. This occupation allows the invention of movement on the canvas, the passage of time in painting. The landscape escapes immobility, travels, reproduces itself, the frame falls apart, disappears, changes, is appropriate, changes into a meme.

There are two ways of dealing with the “natural”: refusing or expanding it. SuperNatural expands, of course, because it wants to occupy and then overcome and hyperbolize. The show wants to be a place to discover itself, returning the responsibility to those who inhabit it.

This show results from the collaboration of Teatro Praga (André e. Teodósio) with the interpreters of the company Dançando com a Diferença.

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Challenged by São Luiz to create a performance which would celebrate the theatre’s 125th birthday, it was thought adequate to go through the musical history of a theatre room that lived during silent film, to cinema as we know it today, that saw Antoine and Sarah Bernahardt, witnessed fires and reconstructions and was rebaptised three times. As any other work by Teatro Praga, we revisit history with a critical eye, which allows us to go beyond the ephemeral commemoration, thus being able to think about the role of theatre in its time and in the city we live in.

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A Teatro Praga show with
the musical collaboration of Ludovice Ensemble

From William Shakespeare’s and Henry Purcell’sTimon Of Athens.

APEMANTUS I love thee better now than e’er I did. TIMON I hate thee worse.

In 2010, the Teatro Praga presented at the CCB’s Great Auditorium A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a show that started from a semi-opera by Henry Purcell, The Fairy Queen, which in turn started with a text by Shakespeare , A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Three years later, in the same auditorium, Teatro Praga returned to Shakespeare and Purcell, appropriating another English musical composition written to animate a Thomas Shadwell adaptation of a Shakespeare play: The Tempest orThe Haunted Island. Six years after The Tempest and nine years after A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Teatro Praga completes what has always been thought of as a trilogy.

Timon of Athens is a musical composition of Henry Purcell, dated 1694, written at the invitation of Thomas Shadwell, who once again adapted the text of Shakespeare (The Life of Timon of Athens) and commissioned the young Purcell a “masquerade” ). The masquerade was a form of entertainment practiced between members of the court and quite in vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It involved music, dance, song and representation, with elaborate scenographies and sumptuous costumes. The masqueraders were usually members of the court and sometimes the king himself, accompanied by actors and professional singers.

If in A Midsummer Night’s Dream one sought the place of power once occupied by the monarch, and how the figure of the programmer or curator plays a central role in the definition of the art worth; if The Tempest turned to the artist, to whom he plays, and to the relation of this with the medium (public, theater, written); the third moment of the trilogy, which follows the format of the Theater of Restoration, should focus on the link between art and capitalism, moving towards a progressive abandonment of objects, concretization and sharing and approaching an individualistic, to generate capital without producing material. Timon of Athens from the Teatro Praga goes looking for the best way to end it.

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It is not uncommon, over time, to hear the opinion that there is a chronic delay in Portuguese theater, when compared with other artistic mediums. WORST OF takes a look at the history of the national theater through the lense of this opinion. In order to that, a “best of” of Portuguese actors will give voice to complaints, with the help of examples that confirm the discouragement. WORST OF is a shitty celebration.

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“2018″, a performance by Teatro Praga, reactivates some interrogations as a way to find alternative paths to the complex historiography of the performing arts.

Acknowledging that the presence of choreographers Fokine and Massine, the work of modernist plastic artists, the vitality of the dancer Nijinsky to the orientalising sound of Rimsky-Korsakov or Tchaikovsky unleashed a certain modernity in Portugal, “2018” establishes a formal distance by resourcing to the same artistic strategies from which it tries to distance itself.

Man as the first figure in a ballet, expression and abandonment of the choreographic vocabulary as a norm, the beginning of a collaborative work, the fusion of popular with elite culture, nationalist interest, the construction of pieces of a single idea and the background painted as iconographic strategy, characteristics that are transversal to the work of the Russian Ballets, also structure the performance. But this time in an unpredictable way.

In “2018”, the background has drops and everything becomes the foreground. And in this unfettered space, the performers both borrow money and receive flowers as they question, whether they give space to sound or objects, either they dance or do the opposite or make room to other unproductive sensory aspects for the pleasure of doing so.

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The underground is alive, the air is full of metal, there is existence everywhere in this jungle we call JÂNGAL.
The place where this performance takes place is a mythological room made of earth’s various territories, where Teatro Praga will try to create new ontologies that no longer reflect the world nor mimic it, but instead try to speculate on it. In JÂNGAL we all have the right to enjoy the chaos, the horror and the urban jungle provided by an imagery of science fiction mixed with Gaia’s underground minerals and zombies. It’s like Beckett’s play Endgame: “We’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that”.
JÂNGAL opens a space of experiences, where we wonder over a soundscape and sensory atmosphere created by the Portuguese composer Violet and the great Portuguese Fado singer Gisela João. JÂNGAL inspires a feeling of tranquil passivity, it’s a holistic show that tries to stay with the trouble, accepting our mortality entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters and meanings.

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CONUNDRUM is a spoken loop built from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Jussi Parikka, Grada Kilomba and computer manuals, that proposes fun and desire as an open-source structure, fundamental to get out of the frame.

CONUNDRUM is an intricate problem that is difficult to deal with; it is a question that has only a conjectural answer; it’s a riddle. In this performance, the dark path of loneliness evidences the daily in-between experience of being and living both as a ghost and a monster. A performer, metamorphosing fandoms, sings a song to a cute cat. The cat may be the political activist, an aggregated extension of the raw materials of earth that is able to melt itself with meatspace, disrupting the legitimacy of the preponderant. Space and sound become pleasure principle capsules for an affect that’s transforming itself.

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Throughout its work, the collective Praga has critiqued identity from various and different perspectives, not only in relation to its principal artistic medium – the “theatre” – but also in relation to ideas of person, body, doing or object. “( )” is a durational performance that provides continuity to this activity, now in the framework of the system of visibility of the museum.

The museum space, despite its multiple possibilities, tends towards the structured as a reservoir of ontological confirmation, thereby contributing to convergence towards oneness. In this space – that carries with it contemporary diagnosis that portrays the museum as an institution of capture and formation – that is self-naturalised as a safe-space, and that converges toward oneness, throughout “( )” the performers activate experiences of other spaces, times and modalities, appropriating the colonial insult and spawning new non-figurate sculptures and transverse abstractions that are as real as anything else.

“( )” is a place of desired landscapes, of other body-objects and their relations. It concerns non-normativity as a possibility. A poem of waiting, a position to which all non-preferential forms are relegated, in which a tourist presentation is exploited so as to claim invisibilities, experiences, changes and ephemerality. In “( )”, the poetics of un-being, of unbecoming, and residual hermeneutics engender truths, ontological provinces, and fields of knowledge that have been disqualified due to there unconsolidated approaches.

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Before is a small jewel in new Portuguese dramaturgy. Recently presented at ISKV Tiyatro Festivali – Istanbul, Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and Barcelona’s Hiroshima, Pedro Penim’s text approaches with irony and humor, the feeling of saudade, the longing of the past.

Presented as an “atlas of melancholies”, the performance identifies here and there across Europe a sort of persistent awkwardness related to very ancient events. Has our past really been so “glorious” once? And how far back should we trace this “before”?

Before speaks about the yearning for a return to a past time perceived as glorious and desirable when facing a painful present. This disease, shared by many civilizations throughout history, always diagnoses the end of an era.

In order to build this diagnosis, Pedro Penim dares to bring face to face a tyrannosaurus and a pretty skeptical post-modern psychoanalyst. A hilarious and bitter dialogue offering “food for thought” about the future of our civilizations and their propensity to nurture ghosts and mythologies of fallen empires.

The play was recently adapted to film (“Past Perfect”) by the director Jorge Jácome (also responsible for the videos of the performance) and was part of the official selection of Berlinale 2019, New Directors / New Films 2019 at MoMA – New York and Hong Kong International Film Festival 2019, a.o.

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Spring Awakening, Frank Wedekind’s well known play written in 1891, deals with a group of adolescents in conflict with a conservative and moralistic society. The cruelty and love among pairs, the generation conflict, suicide, despair, are some of the main themes chosen by the interpretative tradition of this text.

By invitation of Centro Cultural de Belém, Teatro Praga returns to a classic of dramatic literature in order to inscribe, in a text and on the theatrical canon, those who are excluded by a so called representative theatre. We intend to work the lyrical expressionism of a shapeless adolescence, with its own language that tries to get away from a logic that divides reality in cynical and sincere or poetic and rational. Our approach will try to look beyond dualisms and build a reality that tackles invisibility and puts one in contact with a certain strangeness.

Spring Awakening will be occupied by a puberty that deceits “nature”, that refuses the subjection of one body to another, the construction of identities, and takes hold of an emancipatory rite that tries to defy all traditional standardizations. A place where it is required for several languages to coexist, where references are lost and reconstructed, where despair is life and suicide means victory. It is a performance that follows a demand of a humanity to be invented.

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From the life and work of Fernando Pessoa.

Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveller. What we see isn’t what we see but what we are.Fernando Pessoa, “The Book of Disquiet”

This performance uses an imagery inspired by a somewhat obscure chapter of the life of Fernando Pessoa, Portugal’s leading literary figure, mostly renowned with “The Book of Disquiet”: his arrival as a young man in Durban, South Africa in 1896 where he spent the first years of his life. ZULULUZU is a neologism that intends to connect two common places: an idea of Portugal (Luzu) and one of South Africa (Zulu).

Teatro Praga takes advantage of the cooperation between two cultural clichés to attack a cliché of the theatrical institution: the black box. In ZULULUZU the theatre building is used as a scape-goat for a discourse against all discourses, which claims a space for those who are left out, the forgotten stories and characters, the victims of “the way things are”, those who become invisible in front of a black wall. The performance takes hold of a post-structuralist, feminist and gender theory vocabulary and applies it to its own life. ZULULUZU is not a performance against the black box, it is just recognizing the building, demanding visibility for its architecture and normativity, and ultimately for ZULULUZU, a performance on the life and work of Fernando Pessoa.

ZULULUZU announces the end of the “apartheid” of ideas, genres and forms – a strange declaration of queerism, a manifesto in favour of an immaterial object, a performance that does not rest in anyone’s memory and where the exoticism gives way to an endoticism. If “I have in me all the dreams of the world”, as Pessoa wrote, ZULULUZU wants the whole world and its infinity.

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I’m a dog shit ashtrayI’m a shrugging moustache, wearing a Speedo tuxedoI’m a movie with no plot, written in the backseat of a piss-powered taxiI’m an imperial armpit, sweating ChiantiI’m a toilet with no seat, flushing tradition downI’m socialist lingerie, I’m diplomatic technoI’m gay pastry and racist cappuccinoI’m an army on holiday in a guillotine museumI’m a painting made of hair on a nudist beach eating McDonald’sI’m a novel far too longI’m a sentimental songI’m a yellow tooth waltzing with wraparound shades on.Who am I?I am Europe.
Chilly Gonzales

I AM EUROPE is a cycle composed of three different performances that weren’t initially thought of as a trilogy. Only when rehearsals were already under way for the last piece, Tear Gas, did the three shows exchange energy and momentum. I decided to call them I AM EUROPE, the title of a song by Chilly Gonzales that manages to achieve what I am attempting to create with this cycle: to build up and exhibit an identity that lies halfway between the (debatable) label of the “Judeo-Christian tradition” of Europe and my own biography. This is a recurrent process in my work, to channel the tension between the universal and the domestic, between mystery and reason (George Steiner say that Europe is a Tale of Two Cities that invoke”the tension between Greeks and Jews”, the tension between the legacies of Athens and Jerusalem). I AM EUROPE is the depiction of an anthropomorphic map of Europe in three different tempos.

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My my! At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender.Oh yeah! And I have met my destiny in quite a similar way.
Abba

For George Steiner, the “idea of Europe” is a “tale of two cities”: Athens and Jerusalem. Through the “best of times” and the “worst of times”, the imperatives of reason from our Greek heritage and the imperatives of faith and revelation proclaimed in the Torah flow together into one central trunk (A single European? A hero?). This trilogy is completed in Greece, a place I began to visit at the height of the conflicts caused by the economic and social crisis. I haven’t been there to engage in Dark Tourism, nor am I trying to create social-political theatre. I’ve been to Athens to cry. I’ve been to Athens for voluntary encounters with tear gas.

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A theatrical marathon.

Rosa Mota has accompanied all my childhood and adolescence. I clearly remember seeing her on television, as she won several Olympic Marathons of Los Angeles [1984] and Seul [1988] and feeling the patriotic enthusiasm around “Rosa” through the euphoric reactions of adults. I believe that patriotism after April 25th Revolution was rebuilt and regenerated thanks to the international charisma of characters such as Rosa or Fernando Gomes.

Another important axis of the work is the word META (goal, mark) which in Portuguese means the end of the race, and in Greek refers to self- referentiality: the concept about itself. I wanted to link the concrete place within Rosa’s sport universe to a place in my own creative universe: a symptom of the most recent artistic creation, which is its tiredness of the meta (-language).

The Name of the Rose refers to a novel by Umberto Eco. In the last chapter of the book, Adso, an old man, looks at his past and comes to the conclusion that the memories we care for only remind us of things we lost and that no longer exist. He brings light to this thought with a proverb in latin that goes like: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus, meaning: the ancient rose still remains in the name, we have nothing but names.

This performance looks back to the history of Rosa Mota, but aims to make of this glorious past a path to the opening of meaning in the present, at the time of the show. It will never be a linear narrative and biography. It will always be a Rose within a Rose within a Rose, which in the end will cut the Goal.

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International cooperation project TABUROPA, endorsed by European Union’s Culture Programme, invited 4 companies from Portugal, Germany, Belgium and Poland to explore the notion of Tabu in national and european cultures throughout 18 months.

During the Research Phase, the portuguese performers worked under choreographer Arco Renz (kobalt.works, Belgium) in Warsaw, while André e. Teodósio (Teatro Praga) directed the performers from german company futur-3 in Brussels. The results of this process were explored through the Rehearsal Phase, in which the four groups prepared their original performances for the absolute premiere at Sommerblut Festival in Cologne in May 2014.

On the Coming Home Phase, Teatro Praga produced the rerun of INCUBADORA, by Arco Renz with the portuguese group, at Galeria Quadrum in Lisbon, in December 2014, and of SHHHHHHHOW, by André e. Teodósio with the performers from futur-3 and guest Paula Sá Nogueira, at Goethe Institut in Lisboa on March 2015, as well as the Follow-up meeting that closed this project.

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2014 was an important year in Portugal because it was the 40th anniversary of the end of the colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique and the end of the dictatorship of Salazar. It was also, as elsewhere in Europe, the centenary of the declaration of the First World War in 1914. The term “tropa-fandanga” signifies in Portuguese “the beggars”. The word also evokes both an army in rags (the fandanga troops) – which the revues from 1915 to 1920 ridiculed… Or the great war revue which was also part of the golden period of English music-hall (What a Lovely War by Charles Chilton) or in Germany (Hoppla, We’re Alive! by Toller). The first Portuguese revue was called “the revue of the year 1851”. It looked back over the year, in burlesque style, with caricatures of famous people and current affairs. From 1851 to the Carnation Revolution in 1974, we can follow the history and evolution of the country through songs and acts. It was a popular genre in Lisbon where the four theatres of Parque Mayer, which put on two or three shows a day, were always packed. The form stabilised very quickly and stayed the same for over a hundred years: a rigid structure with street talk, songs and comical sketches, and for the high-point of the show, a fado. In the final years of the Salazar dictatorship, the Portuguese Review was the only place in the country where you could make fun of the regime. The revues continued of course after the 25th of April. The principle was still the same but the themes had changed, like the parties in power.

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In 2010 we performed the debut of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in this auditorium at the Centro Cultural de Belém, based on the eponymous play by Shakespeare and the semi-opera The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell. Another work by Purcell, The Tempest or The Enchanted Island, also has links to a Shakespeare play, as a comic version of The Tempest which was a resounding commercial success during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A viewer recounted his impression on the play’s debut thus: “The theatre was completely full, the King and court were all present, and the play was the most ingenuous that I have ever seen.”

We are taking this lost piece as our starting point, along with all of the others that have existed (or not existed), throwing ourselves into the tempests. Featuring the same elements as A Midsummer Night’s Dream (music, video, actors, singers and visual artists), but arranged in a different way, this musical, with music inspired by Purcell and composed and arranged by Xinobi and Moullinex, is a continuation. The Tempest is, therefore, adrift, like an island that is actually a boat, looking for the unknown place from where it set sail. It is searching for the right colour (although there is no sense of right), the correct room (although there is no correctness), another performance (although there is no other), and the tempest (who?). Without an aim and without means. Searching just for the sake of it.

The truth is that the search is just as artificial as the performance or the boat or the island. It is an off-performance (or a show-off, perhaps), like sand thrown in the eyes; in other words, an experience. And a pretext to repeat tempests. However, we do not know what came first – the pretext or the outcome. Yet as The Tempest invents its own critique, the order does not matter, just like everything else. They are all accidents, just like this text that you are reading. Accidents after accidents, sentences after sentences announcing their content, promising the end (which does not exist).

And by the way, if people were to ask you, you could say that The Tempest was the performance that never happened, the discourse of a group that does not feel comfortable with the idea of an object in art, who believe that performances are to be seen as cognitive experiences and nothing more than a chance to short-circuit the world and the things within it. You could claim to have witnessed the description of a performance, without the original performance itself. “That is what they always wanted to do, but they are still unable to do it.” You could say something like that. Or you could say nothing at all, because the performance has already said it all. After all, the performance is over. The performance never existed. The end.

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In Old Age, a text by J.M. Vieira Mendes, the actors, before starting, have already retired. People with pasts, showing wrinkles where we can’t see them. The nearest horizon is death, but melancholy is comedy and despair is laughter. In this play the plot is the pretext to thicken the “Who am I?” or “What does it mean to reach the old age?” Or even “Do I say I am old because I am old or am I old because I say I am old?”

From this text, Teatro Praga came to a show in which its old age is put to test. How will it be in 40 years? Speculating the answer adds mater to a closed concept.

Old Age is time and elderness, knowledge and forgetfulness, arthrosis and pilates. But it is also today and was yesterday. It’s a construction to do with known words. An inevitability to fulfill. A reinvention within the invention. A communication in hiccups. It is, ultimately, the possibility to say, with today’s bodies and the future’s hair: Old Age is here and today.

This show doesn’t inaugurate a new age. It merely continues. We are all in the same story. We are all in the same boat.

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What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

History has a full repertoire of names: Nikolai Gogol, Antony and Cleopatra, Hedda Gabler, Gianni Schicchi, among many others.

Are they just literary products or have they already become vital organisms? I never met them and yet they are always in my mind. In TOP MODELS, as a way of not forgetting, I decided to record anonymous names, to turn my friends into protagonists of things left to tell. I don’t know if they will remain in history, but they will have an identity card and pay their fees. Susana Pomba is the first text of a long cycle to come.

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CCB is inside out and invites me to do a performance. I start to wonder and suddenly I realize that all of us are inside out.
They suggest me: – Wo Es war, soll Ich werden.
So many foreign, so many languages! 😛
The World is not what it is… therefore is worth spending some time on reviewing the subject by playing a spiral-vertiginous-game: “Who is who?”
It’s going to be like returning to the 80’s but with less hair spray.
EGOSISTEMA will be a redefining game of Nature’s laws.

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This performance is a love letter to Israel. Yes, it’s professedly problematic: a declaration of love to an entity many see as a contemporary monster. An actor is seated in front of his computer, his face projected onto a big screen. It is difficult to tell who he is talking to with such intimacy, who is he swearing at, who is making him cry and laugh. Is it the audience? Is he talking to himself? To his lover? Is he exposing is troubled love life in front of our eyes? Israel, a nation in the form of a fiction, takes on a human face, like someone one has to endure. Voltaire wrote that one has to choose between countries where you sweat and countries where you think. In Israel (the country and the performance) you do both.

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“The war movie is the movie paradigm of today. The Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, for example, in which is represented the infinite horror, the carnage and absurd violence. The prospect of Spielberg is that war is an incomprehensible nightmare, a pathetic waste of human lives. But it seems to me that of what we should not lose sight is that behind the Second World War, and the D-Day invasion, was the heroism of an objective and ethical struggle, and that there are causes and ideals worth dying for . This reflects, in fact, a very strong trend in contemporary ideological discourse, to consider those who are willing to risk their lives in the name of a cause or purpose as irrational fanatics.

For what would you be willing to risk everything?

It is this central concern of Westerns in general – to what extent you would have the courage to risk his life?

So I think we should not in any way treat the western as a kind of an american ideological fundamentalism. Rather, it seems to me that we need today more and more of a heroic attitude. In this context, what should follow the deconstruction and the acceptance of radical contingency should not be a universal ironic skepticism, in which you engage in something you should be aware that you’re never committing fully – no. We should rather restore the sense of absolute commitment and courage to risk.”

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A performance by Teatro Praga with Músicos do Tejo.

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
and The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell.

Why theatre when all you want to think about is Summer and Love? Why bother us with the hottest issues when all you want to think about is Summer and Love? Why should we unsettle? Why should we worry about inscribing ourselves?Why should we dominate the contemporary lexicon? Why that much irony and multi-reference? Why so many hours spent on the Internet hoping not to drop the zeitgeist? Why go on downloading so much? Why should we make ideological and aesthetic enemies? Why should we burn our eyelashes reading Badiou’s benjamins? Why intensify wrinkles and white hair? When all we want is Summer and Love?MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM wants to provide enjoyment and relaxation.We’ll all be on and won’t even remember those who’re off. We’ll treat you like a Prince and you’ll love each moment. Let’s feel the air passing by like a soft breeze and let’s forget about meeeeeeeeeeeeee… It’s like inviting someone for dinner and avoiding ‘’certain topics’’ so that nobody gets bored and the conversation can flow. It’s like driving on the freeway to Algarve, Baroque music playing on the radio, your friend sitting beside you and kissing your neck… and here we go into the future, where a party awaits us, a fashion cocktail and an astronomical bill which will be paid when the Winter arrives.With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II authorized two theatre companies for himself and his brother, the Duke of York. From that point on, and influenced by what was being done in France, under Louis XIV, the theatre of machines was born: spectacular and exuberant, excessive, megalomaniac and with a magnificent epilogue in THE FAIRY QUEEN, by Henry Purcell.Starting with Shakespeare’s MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, Purcell composes music for a show whose second version (1691-92) was filled with special effects, an expensive and extravagant performance which, despite its success, ended up in a financial fiasco.A giant water fountain and six monkeys dancing are mentioned.Teatro Praga will relive those times. MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM is a celebration in the pursuit of happiness and a tribute to power to the sound of Purcell and with a contemporary flavour, our flavour.

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“Midsummer Night’s Dream” was reenacted by Balleteatro students in 2017, at Coliseu do Porto.

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São Luiz Teatro Municipal invited Teatro Praga to make a show on India and Teatro Praga proposed to make a musical. Demo is a musical inspired by India, but where India remained we no longer know. Perhaps in the mythology of the birth of a nation, which puzzled us (mother in law and another’s wife, married with uncles and daughter of nephews), or even in the proliferation of arms of a goddess, in the differentiation of classes, the dimension of India’s democracy, in the excess of its population. India finds itself in the form of the show and not registered, as in a portrait or documentary. We were not there. No. We have not spoken with “them.” No.

India was used as a code to read Europe. The “other” as a mirror to see ourselves, which is an ancient method, a common place that served as a pretext for a lot of travelling. We read Moravia and Pasolini, and not Tagore, we saw Fritz Lang and not Ray.

Demo has a narrative. It’s a love story. We do not tell it very well, because those days are gone. And also because it is not possible to tell when you do not know very well what there is to tell. We managed to mix. Estonia with Iceland, Bulgaria with Spain, English with German and we find ourselves reading cycles, those that repeat themselves forever and ever: solution, failure, solution, failure.

But we have a protagonist. We named her Savitri. She comes from the waters where the crocodiles live. And she proposes, sorry, she imposes an order. Maybe all she has is a political dream, a demonic and megalomaniac dream. Or maybe she just wants to travel: “In heaven we have our Indias, to get there is to save oneself, that we all sail is what it takes.” (Father Manuel Bernardes, The last days of man.)

We built the show from fragments and completed it with the american musicians and performers Kevin Blechdom and Christopher Fleeger, and the Estonian musician and performer Andres Lõo. We wrapped philosophical, ethical, social and cultural questions in candy-paper-chansons. The candy is for everyone: colorful and palatable, but hard to crack and lethal to the teeth. It is democratic, demented and destructive.

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A performance by Teatro Praga with original music by Kevin Blechdom, Christopher Fleeger and Andres Loo

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A disaster performance.

Padam Padam is probably a show inspired by the disaster cinema and was interested in recalling the year zero. It is also a show dedicated to the animals. And the storms. A show that is considering how it will be. How can it be. To find new diseases because after all, if a person where the different bacteria and viruses multiply is feeling bad, on the other hand the mentioned bacteria and viruses feel remarkably well.

Let us begin by the middle: Padam Padam is a disaster performance. We stole the name from films that fantasize with the end of the world or visit the monster or the alien invasion. We have supported us in a hypothetical structure, cinematic ghosts of arguments, but let’s not go beyond five people seated in a tiny space where they are exposed to the elements and experience ideas such as family or community, the words and names but also some love, utopias and travel.

To help “written press”, we could say that we tell of a sunny day when a family decides to leave for the weekend. A restless and inconsistent family. And as the day progresses, the dark clouds approaching, the stroms release and there are meteorites colliding with the structures on the planet. The survivors, the family left in the morning, they are wandering in the wilderness of ruins and corpses. Looking for some old routines, others betting on new ideas.

Padam Padam is a show dedicated to the animals. A show that is considering how it will be. How can it be. . To find new diseases because after all, if a person where the different bacteria and viruses multiply is feeling bad, on the other hand the mentioned bacteria and viruses feel remarkably well.

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An order of the São Luiz Teatro Municipal as part of the cycle “Outras Lisboas”.

Serving Teatro São Luiz’s cycle “Outras Lisboas” for a debate on immigration in Lisbon, and being assigned to the Teatro Praga the specificity of Eastern European immigrants, Turbo-Folk (title derived from the serbian musical concept coined by Rambo Amadeus denominating a style of traditional music with a “up-rooting pop”) appears as an inevitable community show that in the wake of Aeschylus’ Persians, (un) freeze Eastern European and West relations ie those old issues, once consciously devalued, they return with all the force of the Zeitgeist. Using data from the “other side”

“(…) simply said to want to commend the fact that Carlos Fino, in his reportings from war, has always reflected an extraordinary respect and understanding for the culture that is the “other side”. I remembered that just maybe the Aeschylus’ tragedy ”Persians” was pleased with Carlos Fino (I venture this opinion without knowing it).”

Frederico Lourenço

The show Turbo-Folk is the third part of an epic trilogy about the ” Aesthetic Power”*, launched by the show Discotheater [Festival Alkantara] which was followed by O Avarento ou A Última Festa (Miser ou The Last Party) [TNSJ].**

Turbo-Folk commits an attack: a fresh political start through aesthetics. As immigration is a serious problem to be solved at a political level, it is also a good metaphor for many other issues pertinent to the act of communication and sharing community, the desires and problems in the relationship of humans with each other. The self-empowerment.

It is not enough to point the finger at policies, not enough to embellish the immigration status by assigning it as a category shared by all individuals, not enough to go outside victimized, not just say that the problem resides “the other”, because the human being is always one step away from falling into the abyss in this aeschylian persian rug.

Thus, Turbo-Folk is a revolution of the landless, an estonian percussionist semi-lost and a solo show of a ukrainian lyrical singer.

Turbo-Folk is a celebration of immigrants.

Turbo-Folk is the performativity that counts, not the object (by the way, the performative troika is: Jean-Luc Godard, Rambo Amadeus, and Slavoj Žižek).

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If the “return to Nature” was never possible, there is no point in pretending that some times we are in the open air and others we’re not. Let us celebrate then, once more, the land that man tread upon, in the quest of Amazon’s unkind lumbermen, of the merciless icelandic harpooners or the resistant inhabitants of the Low Countries, and let us perform one more mass in the name of Dr. Frankenstein (the new Dyonisos) because “God gives nuts, but he does not break them”.

Let us simulate, in a space halfway between the airport, the station and the stadium, the mythic (because it is extinct) fight between Physis and Anthropos, between Nature and Man.

The actors are chosen. Disaster is inevitable. The target audience just dare show up.

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Got to write a classicGot to write it in an attic
Adrian Gurvitz, Classic

To make a conservative show, make a classic out of ourselves, give birth to a monster, impose an identity, build a greenhouse where we can keep all this and show all this, closed walls, acclimatized room, no danger of getting infected, a thing of our own, plants for others to see. An absolute interior, comfortable, conservative and adequately decorated, a space which is big enough to keep us all inside. Or almost. But what comes after? What happens when it brims over? Are you staying or are you leaving? Do you belong or don’t you belong? Is your palace like mine?

The point of departure for this show emerges from a text by Peter Sloterdijk addressing the ‘cavernous’ allegory of the greenhouse: conservatory is also a synonym in English for greenhouse, a place where we keep what we want to preserve.

If the conservatory is a place where objects and human beings can conserve themselves and survive, distant from all alterations and changes (except for ageing and its natural results), our Conservatory is a place where texts and actors can conserve themselves and survive, distant from all alterations and changes (except for ageing and its natural results). If a conservatory can become an evolved organization, under the form of a public or private establishment, destined to safeguard and promote the teaching of cultural values such as music, dance and theatre, our Conservatory is an organization that allows itself to evolve, under the form of a semi public/semi-private space, destined to safeguard and promote the teaching of Theatre.

The term conservatory is largely used to designate an artificial phenomenon of protection, but it is equally applied to designate a natural spontaneous context that is able to fulfil, without human intervention, a function of preservation – for instance, the isolation of an island during the drift of the continents as being able to create a natural conservatory of living species.

So, Conservatory is also a performance resulting from the natural drift of theatre that tries to create a natural conservatory of the species.

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Two actors rehearse the creation of a performance aimed for children. How should you tell stories to kids? And more precisely, how should you tell a dramaturgical and literature classic to the younger crowd? Over the table there is a purse, from which objects pop out and quickly become the characters of a story.

Hamlet is played by an apple, Gertrude takes the form of dental floss, Claudius an hidrating cream and Ofelia, a vitamins tablet. After an hour, Hamlet is reborn from out of the purse, which resembles Mary Poppins’: smaller than the dreams it keeps inside.

This performance suggests a challenge to discover and perform different theatrical “scenes” for Hamlet‘s plot. Two actors tell a Shakespeare story to the children, guiding them (and distracting them) through the narrative and inviting them to an active participation.

The play ends with a trip to the stage, where a party will take place, with lights, music, costumes. With the help of the audience, Hamlet will be retold.
Each day, a different performance is created by the young group of spectators, from this Shakespeare’s play.

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A five acts comedy.

A new Miser by José Maria Vieira Mendes: revisiting a paper of 1668, in the prospect of conflict between two generations, in which Moliere is only for the skeleton: the author starts the original structure and lets breachs, breaks, loose parts, mixing languages and styles, to develop a reflection on the conflict between the generation since April 25th and her parents’ generation. A new version of the piece, free-avoidance, or writing what is already like to read the original work.

In Miser – possible stage for endless claims and hysterical political and aesthetic as the distribution of power within the same generation (that of “Jonah” did 25 years in 2000), panoptic surveillance of contemporary cities (discipline and mutilation), new vs. old, the absence of mother, the perils of a calculative world, the transcendental power vs. cartesian social norms, the reduction of the human to a monetary value + quantification as knowledge, the house as a representation of the modern economy and blah blah blah – deny any possible linear reading, and tried to deconstruct and “screw up” the text as less as possible. This can be seen (by those who know us or by those who have some expectations) as a sly/little innovative maneuver classicist representation vs. presentation). In this case we will say, viriliana path, which is a matter of perspective.

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What remains when ideologies die?

A man and a woman are playing games of sexuduction. A new terrorism – an emotional one – without mediated space or meetings for a security council, but where there are attacks, refugees and usurpations, too. There’s no good or bad people here, there’s only dangerous liaisons.

This performance is born out of broken pieces of emotional terrorism.

What remains when ideologies die? Who’s the boss? Who wants to be in charge? The best way to find the victim is to look for someone with blood in her hands. Blood is no longer the proof for the crime, the murderer attacks from a distance, while the victims dirty their hands in order to stop the bleeding.

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A “durational” performance.

DISCOTHEATER is a show that starts when the others end.

DISCOTHEATER is a show between History and the Zeitgeist. Between theories and facts. Between art, tradition and authority. Between correct and incorrect art. Between improvisation and skill. Between romantic sacrifice and painful triumph. Between ” Wahn und Witz ” (illusion and presence of mind). Between the dionysian and the apollonian.

The ongoing “discotheatrelization”. An assembly line of images and explosives tears of mastery. A “phantasmagoria” A “discoteatral” non-place populated by teachers who call themselves as such. Everything and everyone waiting for the light. From “Aufklärung” (enlightenment).

These days, the demand of the new stems from a consciousness that has lost its standing before the real, a quixotic drift. An impractical mastery. A desire that does not exist. A thing that doesn’t exist. Therefore, a trigger to further. And if we remember that dry leaves have fallen from a web, that there had been a storm of food on stage, that there were three thousand guests to see an empty gallery, that horses have stormed the scene, that there have been prepared hot meals served by actors-musicians, who have already built a labyrinthine landscape where viewers had to find their way, that there already has been a floor-bed filled with red carnations, what will leave us? Only to continue.

In DISCOTHEATER we feel “like we’re inside a dream. We had a wonderful dream, that we barely dare to think, because we are afraid to see it disappear. That is precisely our mission: to interpret and secure dreams. There will be nothing more than that. Let us tell you our morning dream. And we hope to wake up at the same time.” We want it to be like this.

Is there such a thing as a European Identity? Can we understand each other if we speak so many different languages? This “two-man show” looks at these questions and instead of answering them, confronts the audience with more questions, in an ironic performance that, in keeping with its subject, is multilingual and uses many elements drawn from different artistic areas. To pin down Europeanness they chose as inspiration the biggest kitsch event of the common cause, the Eurovision Song Contest, where the representatives of different nations with different cultures, languages, ways of life and standards of living join in a parade of uniform tastelessness.

Europe starts with the birth of its ordinary languages and with the reaction, often alarmed, towards the eruption of the mentioned languages, start the critical culture of Europe, provoking the fragmentation drama of languages and starts to reflect about its own destiny of Multilanguage civilization. Suffering the effects of fragmentation, Europe tries to come up with a solution: looks backwards and tries to find again the Adamic language, and looks forward focusing on the construction of a language of reason as perfect as Adam’s language.

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Shall We Dance is a series of short performances that occurred 5 times, from 2003-2008. A member of Teatro Praga would invite someone from the “outside” for an artistic collaboration. Shall We Dance is the fuel for exploring complicities, a surgery made by two people in order to find out different readings and accept new compromises. The performances have been made in collabroration with the following artists: Alexander Kelly, Daniel Worm d’Assumpção, Joaquim Horta, José Gonçalo Pais, José Maria Vieira Mendes, Maria João Machado, Marta Furtado, Nelson Guerreiro and Nuno Carinhas.

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This show started in an adolescent.

We are sad and that’s ok. We’re always sad.’ There are stories that aren’t told anymore. There are things, which are wrong. There are words, which are not said. There are no reasons and there isn’t a direction. We don’t find an enemy or a guilty one. It happens a lot and everything in simultaneous. It is difficult to be still and it is also difficult to talk and to remain silent. We don’t know when it started or when it’s over, or when they are together and they are divided.

We search for it in time and we go after the string that was lost. But the memory is weak and the will is little.

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Perhaps it is difficult to speak of this show, or at least as much as the past, because there is once again the trying to do a job that does not have a successful narrative and yet be efficient at all levels and at the same time proposes to return the narrative from a story, but without going through the narrative psychology. All-time bomb.

Agatha Christie requires two different times: the time of “Whodunnit?” Where the narrative prevails, and the victory of delirium (where, paradoxically, the order is established), where there’s characters and action sequences, and pop songs (malgré tout) narratives sequences. Each item with its integrity, its limits and its own development. Everything takes its place in the whole. Each party uses its content, its tone, its pace and its formal qualities, creating a meta-pattern, a super-object.

The theme of guilt is generally handled by Agatha Christie in ”Ten Little Niggers,” destroying a basic convention of police (which is also one of the fictions of modern society): the determination of guilt, this place visible to all the evil that redeemed. The cop classic glossed ad nauseam this theme: the suspects may be many, all will have reason to kill, but in the end, one is the criminal (even when the “guilty” match two or three empirical subjects). Beyond the epistemological trust that the explanation of the mystery always transmits this determination of the guilty never fail to bring a sense of tranquility. In the words of Abel Barros Baptista:

“Once decided the question ‘Who was to blame?” All problems will dissipate and each in his own life.”

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5***** is an hour for celebration, of evocation of old ghosts and new provocation of news ones.

5 ***** is a show that involves the history of portuguese theatre and Teatro Praga (which celebrates, in 2005, 10 years of activity), confering, naming, giving advice in the form of prescriptions on how to build 5 *****, a show that continues its obsession with Nietzschean nihilism (and Artaud, why not), the postmodernism of Derrida, and the search for language and meaning of Steiner, plus Montaigne, Benjamin and Castoriadis which exchanges the said by the unsaid, the laughter by crying, the truth by false, exchange the names themselves, self-questioning, which relies on things without knowing the background story, which opens every day, all the time, more songs, costumes, smoke, smoke a lot (the eternal portuguese dilemma)…

5***** is an hour for celebration, of evocation of old ghosts and new provocation of news ones.

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Título (Title) provides the public a choice: to pay or not pay. The choice is decisive in defining the role of each in the show: every place you choose, every angle, every movement and every spoken word are subject to an exhaustive stamp of true or false. Fiction and document are located here, in the same dimension.

The show called Título (Title) is a series of “fake parts” who do not intend to “retract” and that inevitably will be lost trying to find meaning in objects that doubt themselves. Questions that come to replace the security by false gods old and new gods explains Arno Gruen*, means a release of “old submissions” with “new authorities.”

Título (Title) intends to give evidence of the truth in a minefield of lies. Want to label projects simultaneously impregnated veracity of articles as false as the Ming jars of 300 stores.

Stepping these anti-personnel mines is as exciting as inappropriate or vain.

It seems that this show called Título (Title), as these tautologies and contradictions, is purely formal, meaningless and says nothing about the world. But it is also considering its status as spectacle essential, as are the tautologies in the field of logic, which states the laws without which thought and discourse are inconsistent.

If the tautological statements like: “My name is name” are necessarily true a priori and the opposite (a contradiction) is a logic preposition necessarily false when applied to three-dimensional theatrical convention they all shuffle and confront this falsity space par excellence, as a rule, is situated at the antipodes of perception and understanding of hyper-realist cinema.

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In a ring, and in constant turmoil, parade many different questions.

Sobre a mesa a faca (On the table a knife) is a co-produced show by the companies and Cão Solteiro and Teatro Praga, whichfeatures a collaborative effort and a clash of identities and, continuing the recent work of both companies, is a work that is both as an essay both visual/vital, of open reading.

In a ring, and in constant turmoil, parade many different questions: what is public and what is private? What is mine and what is yours? We will fight? Who will survive? Who will have more power? Will someone annihilate anyone? A universe transparent or reflective? What is truth and what is lie? Who are you and who am I? Is it real or invented? They are looking at me or are you looking at you? I am a microbe on the knife? And the table, the world? And I, and me (cue the music)…

Must: There is no table. There is no knife. There is no tendency to set the show according to a simple rule or in a single scene or activity. It’s not about anything. It’s about all. There is only one place where you can talk. Do not talk only to the audience. Do not talk. Speak.

There to be: The characters finally are welcome. There is the trash of the world. There are hands that are raised in favor of attention. There are second skins for protection. There’s a city. There’s the city and its texts. There are artists and their texts. There are talks/interviews. There is individual recognition from a structure of “hostage of the other.” And the city stands. And the city crumbles. There’s the anthem of America. There is money, big money. There is death without blood. There are wounds with blood. There is a dog with fever, barking plagues. There are voices from beyond. There is the here and now. And nothing else.

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A decisive gesture of launching dices decides the price of the ticket. The distribution of four parts by the six actors is an offered Russian Roulette, on tray, to the public. It will be Serendipity, Book-Crossing, Random Order, Nietzsche (!) and Love (!!?) birds of a feather? A bag with a white ball and a black ball called chance.

It is for it to rule, for each day the chance of some 72 possible combinations that we know exist in this show. But we already warn that the exponential is infinite, and that the hand that rocks the dice cup is the hand that will determine the course of events.

From Noël Coward we still do not know if we like. We never understood in which part of the gray and infinite zone ranging from the intellectual dandy to the futile queer he is situated. In this slippery territory, in this swamp, which will operate the building and part of the piece and of the show. It is here that the cool and efficient Noël Coward’s universe suffers a blow of fate: the staging (actors and audience) of this show will never be more than one product sample and the assumption of the results. And nobody shifted its consequences.

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The reconstruction of a death.

This involves the reconstruction of a death.
Writing from The Night and the Laughter by Nuno Bragança, this piece brings up the freezing of a moment and revisit a past: a sweep by permanent visual memory of someone.
This reconstitution is also synonymous with reconstruction. Reconstruction of a wreck or an empty space. Reconstruction of a life or a moment of decision and decisive. A reconstruction deconstructed and deprived of continuity. A reconstruction made of opportunities and of vampire advantages of locations, stories, viewers, writers and performers.

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For Turgueniev, Um mês no campo (A month in the country), refers to the stay of Belyaev in the Islaev’s property, but for us, Teatro Praga, also meant a month of residence, experimentation and confrontation in CENTA in Vila Velha de Ródão.

The proposal was an unusual spectacle, which differed from day to day, with no markings and which took our passage in a natural environment for a battlefield (the theater).

The work we have done from this classic russian theater of the nineteenth century assumed a relationship with a kind of weird, the countryside, engine of a casuistic experience around successive trips in love.

We supported ourselves in the legacy of the author and reflected on the possibility of void and nihil, and, stretching over the rope, put on stage the “safe value” of the interruption, the exchange between object and subject of art, pleasure and the opposite drive of a text written more than a century ago, that we brought to reality and to sensitive life of the actors and co-creators.

Winner project of the “Decade Theatre 2003”, by Clube Português de Artes e Ideias in the Restitution category.

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In 2001 I was invited by Jorge Silva Melo to think of a text and a performance for the event A Table and Two Chairs. I wrote and co-directed a text about the city or the cities. I always though of Lapland as a starting point and a homonymous song by the Finnish singer Monica Aspelund as a way to put my writing into practice.

The result is a series of sketches, that are more or less “lounge”. A cosmopolitan “féerie”, that mixes London, Paris and Rome with long Winters in Crimea or Tirana, Halloween nights at Virginia Beach and fast trips through “Avenida da República” in Lisbon. It is all accompanied by what I consider to be the manifestation of the divine in a city: power cuts.

Since I didn’t have any record by Burt Bacharach at the time, I thought a lot about Tony de Matos and Vodka Martini and I dedicated one of the sketches to both of them. More or less “lounge”. For me and Cláudia it was conditio sine qua non that this had to be a happy performance on a happy city. And that’s what it is.

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“Profundo Delay” was reenacted by Ana Tang and Paulo Pascoal in 2017, during ACREÇÃO – reenactments cycle of portuguese performances.

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Inspired by William Shakespeare’s classical play, the performers tell the story of this ill-fated romance, while baking a cheesecake named after the two main characters. The blood of the lovers is guava jam, the sword fights are performed with spatulas and a bite of a Rich Tea biscuit can be a delicious alternative to a broken heart. After the success of Hamlet sou eu and GrandaPinta, Teatro Praga are returning to Teatro Maria Matos with a surprising interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic play.

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“Matchundadi: Gender, Performance and Political Violence in Guinea-Bissau” is a book by Joacine Katar Moreira that puts the concept of “matchundadi” and Guinean politics and state in friction. The culture of the “matchundadi” contributes to the rigid consolidation of hypermasculinized political structures with a strong impact on people’s lives and contemporary political participation.

Going through the traditional representations of masculinity (“matchu-ethnic”), colonial society (“matchu-urban”) and the national liberation struggle (“matchu-combatant”), the author proposes a unique orbit to think about the dimensions of war, colonialism, celebration and protest in Guinea-Bissau.

An invitation to “be in” politics with all the complexity of the relationships and the scales that produce it and that are often placed outside a “real” policy.

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ed.______, a seal which comprises two collections – “Series” and “Sequence” -, results from the collaboration between the Teatro Praga and the publisher Sistema Solar, with the coordination of Rita Natálio and André e. Teodósio.

The “Series” collection discloses the intangible heritage of contemporary performing arts. “Sequence” collection is organised in thematic books from different disciplines, which offer a reflection on systems of power and protest in the present time.

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ed.______, a seal which comprises two collections – “Series” and “Sequence” -, results from the collaboration between the Teatro Praga and the publisher Sistema Solar.

The “Series” collection discloses the intangible heritage of contemporary performing arts. “Sequence” collection is organised in thematic books from different disciplines, which offer a reflection on systems of power and protest in the present time.

Under the coordination of Rita Natálio and André e. Teodósio,“Short introduction to a catalog without an author” is the first book in the “Séries” collection, a catalog without an author and prefaced by choreographer Cyriaque Villemaux.

In 2011 the choreographer met, at a dance school, the author of this catalog. The author, who wants to remain anonymous, is interested in sharing a series of choreographic, literary, culinary, social, etc. proposals, sufficiently open to be carried out by others … “or not”. Written in globish English, the book is an unpublished book that contributes to the dissemination, thought and even practice in the performing arts.

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ed.______, a seal which comprises two collections – “Series” and “Sequence” -, results from the collaboration between the Teatro Praga and the publisher Sistema Solar.

The “Series” collection discloses the intangible heritage of contemporary performing arts. “Sequence” collection is organised in thematic books from different disciplines, which offer a reflection on systems of power and protest in the present time.

Under the coordination of Rita Natálio and André e. Teodósio, “Amerindias: Performances of Indigenous Cinema in Brazil” followed “Amerindian Film Show: Indigenous Film Paths in Brazil”, an apordoc – association for the documentary initiative, which took place between March 13 and 17, 2019 , at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum – Modern Collection.

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PROPS is the new publication by Teatro Praga. “Props” from theater prop, advertisement or slang to show respect. PROPS has no answers or genders, even less a subject of comfort. It addresses a parallel object, because we felt the need of exploring other ways of recording our work and because ours is a shares and collective identity and because we are hyperbolic and megalopsychic. PROPS is the quarterly publication where we publish small essays, texts or images that we are going through in our creation processes.

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O LP Demo, Um Musical, by Kevin Blechdom, Christopher Fleeger and Andres Lõo, launched in 2010 after the homonimous show presented at São Luiz Theater between July and August 2009, is still for sale at Teatro Praga headquarters, Rua das Gaivotas6.

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PROPS is the new publication by Teatro Praga. “Props” from theater prop, advertisement or slang to show respect. PROPS has no answers or genders, even less a subject of comfort. It addresses a parallel object, because we felt the need of exploring other ways of recording our work and because ours is a shares and collective identity and because we are hyperbolic and megalopsychic. PROPS is the quarterly publication where we publish small essays, texts or images that we are going through in our creation processes.

PROPS #5 THE PRAGA FILES

This is PROPS º5, the first issue of 2010. This time, PROPS is a set os 12 index cards with random information, or not so random, called THE PRAGA FILES. Made to be held with your hands and not always on the click of one finge. PROPS has been a bag, a disaster magazine, a book of drawings, a poster with a spam insert. Familiarity in this publication can only be obtained in the diversity and surprise of every issue. Props will never be the same.

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Design | Barbara Says…

PROPS is a collaboration between Teatro Praga & Miss Dove.

2009 | PROPS #4

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PROPS is the new publication by Teatro Praga. “Props” from theater prop, advertisement or slang to show respect. PROPS has no answers or genders, even less a subject of comfort. It addresses a parallel object, because we felt the need of exploring other ways of recording our work and because ours is a shares and collective identity and because we are hyperbolic and megalopsychic. PROPS is the quarterly publication where we publish small essays, texts or images that we are going through in our creation processes.

PROPS #4BAG-A-PROPS

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Design | Barbara Says…

2009 | PROPS #3

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PROPS is the new publication by Teatro Praga. “Props” from theater prop, advertisement or slang to show respect. PROPS has no answers or genders, even less a subject of comfort. It addresses a parallel object, because we felt the need of exploring other ways of recording our work and because ours is a shares and collective identity and because we are hyperbolic and megalopsychic. PROPS is the quarterly publication where we publish small essays, texts or images that we are going through in our creation processes.

PROPS #3IS A PROP IN PADAM PADAM

This is PROPS º3, an issue entirely dedicated to Padam Padam, a catastrophe performance by Teatro Praga. Padam Padam is the first Portuguese creation integrated within PROSPERO – European Project of Theatrical Collaboration. It opened in Lisbon, Protugal at CCB (Centro Cultural de Belém, September 30th – October 5th 2009) and will travel to Viseu, Portugal (Teatro Viriato), Italy (Modena – Ponte Alto) and France (L’Aire Libre – Saint Jacques de Lande) during 2009 and 2010.

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PROPS is the new publication by Teatro Praga. “Props” from theater prop, advertisement or slang to show respect. PROPS has no answers or genders, even less a subject of comfort. It addresses a parallel object, because we felt the need of exploring other ways of recording our work and because ours is a shares and collective identity and because we are hyperbolic and megalopsychic. PROPS is the quarterly publication where we publish small essays, texts or images that we are going through in our creation processes.

PROPS #2 DEMO SPECIAL

PROPS is Teatro Praga’s publication. This is the second issue, a DEMO special, a performance premiered at Teatro São Luiz in July 2009. For this special PROPS two creators were invited. Two outsiders and two insiders. Kevin Blechdom and Vasco Araújo participated on DEMO’s creation, Gabriel Abrantes and Pedro Lourenço were only given some hints…

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PROPS is the new publication by Teatro Praga. “Props” from theater prop, advertisement or slang to show respect. PROPS has no answers or genders, even less a subject of comfort. It addresses a parallel object, because we felt the need of exploring other ways of recording our work and because ours is a shares and collective identity and because we are hyperbolic and megalopsychic. PROPS is the quarterly publication where we publish small essays, texts or images that we are going through in our creation processes.

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What is the relationship between lectures on the history of performance, collective processes, identity policies and film sessions, meditation, trips to the gym and sauna? 20,000 MINUTES of f (l)ame!

20,000 MINUTES comes from an invitation from the Municipal Theater of Porto to Teatro Praga for the elaboration of an experimental educational laboratory that aims to share tools for intensification and creation of experiences in the performance field. The program will last for two weeks and will consist of training modules and moments for the development of works done by students. The training module will consist of “infomaniacal” content, under the responsibility of deputy Joacine Katar Moreira, director Pedro Penim, historian Pedro Faro, historian Ana Bigotte Vieira, choreographer João dos Santos Martins or programmer Francisco Frazão, and “haptic” content, which follows the teaching “healthy head in a healthy body”, and which includes the viewing of performances and films, trips to the gym or sauna and voice or meditation classes. During these two weeks, participants must, in parallel, develop works whose construction will be monitored, in a tutoring model, by André e. Teodósio. These works will be presented to the public. Or not! 20,000 MINUTES is a kind of house of secrets without secrets, where information will short-circuit both heads and bodies. 20,000 MINUTES today can change eternity.

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It is relatively common for venues to offer moments of gathering between artists and spectators, creating the right environment for a dialogue between who sees and who creates and makes. Rua das Gaivotas 6 and Teatro Praga’s proposal is a cousin of the first, but it intends to shield the artists from the audience and the other way around, making room for a continuity of the performance, which is not limited to the act of seeing and feeling.

That’s why we invite the viewers to form an “Assisted Direction” for 3 shows, between May 11 and June 2. After attending the shows (May 11 and 18 and June 2), the participants gather in a room and talk, under the guidance of José Maria Vieira Mendes, without secrets and in secrecy.

These posthumous moments allow confessions, exposure of affections, statements of taste, baring in mind that the intended goal would be to contribute to the awareness or the understanding of the choices, the interests, and the wishes of those who watch. The point should be that, during the talk about a performance, one may enrich the speech, thought and reasoning of our interests.

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On World Theatre Day in 2017, Teatro Maria Matos issued the challenge: to create a theatrical laboratory at a secondary school in the city of Lisbon. Almost a year later, a group of students from the Escola Secundária Dona Filipa de Lencastre have been working under the artistic direction of Pedro Penim on the project entitled Today’s the Day.
Throughout the academic year 2017/2018, Pedro Penim directed the artistic and pedagogical project, which objective was the practical experimentation of the artistic areas that work in the current context of performative and theatrical creation. The final exercise will be presented on June 5 at the school.

“A group of adolescents meet every week to engage in theatre.
Today (Monday) is the day.
It’s the day when we talk about plurality and the day when we create identities and various chronologies of various lives (of human beings? of characters? of unicorns?).
Today’s the day when we enter into a kind of confused post-historical time, filled with various “nows”, but always passionate, because today we are passionate.
Today’s the day when we talk about “invisible dictatorships”, which are basically all the (theatrical and artistic) mechanisms that, without our thinking about them (and because they are invisible), cause us to become hidebound by certain concepts that rule and inform theatrical creation, a total act that is at the same time (and simultaneously) so free and so regulated.
Today’s the day when we breathe and vocalise.
Today’s the day when we explore the idea of artistic community and, at the same time, the need to find an individual space, and when we try to create an aesthetic and ethical domain with the aim of looking for theatrical paths that transcend all boundaries and cause myths to be broken.
And we go on searching, confronting ideas and creating both individually and collectively: and on this day one of the participants takes full responsibility for all creative acts. Because what we want is for this personal involvement and dedication to be reflected in the process and in the result, which we will present “one day”…”

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ACCRETION, Teatro Praga’s first cycle of performances, tries to do justice to the artistic and cognitive processes that were fundamental to the group’s development both on an affective scale and on a spatial scale, ecologically and without hierarchies. In ACCRETION, Teatro Praga appropriates performances, delegates their work and pays tributes to figures of the performing arts absent in most historical discourses. The truth of having lived side-by-side and at same time with these performances, the desire to inscribe them in themselves and the desire to reactivate them led Teatro Praga to perform for the first time in its space ruadasgaivotas6, reenacting their “favourite things” and appointing their performances to other artists.

This cycle’s programme consists on 4 reenactments and also NEW PORTUGUESE CONVERSATIONS, an archive-debate (with Mónica Calle, Paula Sá Nogueira, Isabel Carlos, Cristina Peres and Mónica Guerreiro) about important Portuguese creators of the so-called “trapped generation” who contributed to the inscription of new performative languages.

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CATECHISM wants to open itself as a moment for thinking, a mixture of doubtful intimacy and intolerant preaching, served by periods of action in the old Greek spirit and artistic jumps. The classes in this course are art full of itself, where we will manage incompatible egos, who are absolutely certain of everything that they violently deny the day after. It’s a prelude of university, inspired by the ignorant master and not by the old wise professor. We will not be together. There is no such thing as sharing a meaning and a generous interactivity. There isn’t even the slightest hope of understanding each other. We are opening a department for comunication with no guarantees. The participants are expected to take the initiative, to read, listen and adore, because without faith you can’t move the sea or conquer the world. The ambition is enormous so that the fall may be more vertiginous.

2014 | MYTHOLOGICAL CONFERENCES

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Mythological Conferences is a project by J. M. Vieira Mendes. Based on the form of conference, the author will follow part of the investigation, which he has been developing for the past three years, on the history of theatre and dramatic literature and the sequence of myths or narratives that were built by critical theory and by the artists themselves culminating in a contemporaneity which, in many occasions, reveals little clarification and loses itself in paralizing disputes.

2014 | EURO-NEURO

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Every day we have to face our European legacies. In the streets, when we celebrate our birthday, when we watch the Olympics, when we go to an exhibition, when we fight, when we say words of love… George Steiner once wrote that Europe must learn how to deal with the legacies of Greece and Israel (i.e. the inventions of reason and faith) and that being a European is an attempt to negotiate morally, intellectually and existentially with the ideals and the praxis of the cities of Socrates (Athens) and Isaiah (Jerusalem), with the tension between Hellenes and Jews. Europe is a big house, a place of memory and comfort. But it also holds a history of famine, ethnic cleansing, genocide, torture, wars and epidemics. It’s true we feel protected and warm in our homes, under this common roof. However there’s a shadow hanging over this region. There is a dark side to this sovereignty of memories, this self-definition of Europe as “lieu de mémoire”. Together with the participants we will explore these relations between Athens and Jerusalem, past and present, attempting to create texts, scenes, theory and ideas around our own work and universe, and to create a possibility of a performance where Europe’s nerve (neuron/ νεῦρον) will be fought, discussed and negotiated.

2013-2014 | WORKSHOP CYCLE

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The workshop cycle Chroniques du Bord de Scène, promoted by MC93, provides a space for learning and meetings in which guests from various areas of the performing arts explore a theme with the students of French theater conservatories.

In this sixth season, Pedro Penim and José Maria Vieira Mendes were challenged to direct a masterclass with students from the Conservatoire de Bobigny, Pantin and Aubervilliers / La Courneuve.

After a week of work at the end of 2013, in which we worked around issues such as what an actor, a person, a show and a text, with some practical exercises from the original text of José Maria Vieira Mendes, Seniors, students and members of the Prague Theater met again for another two weeks in April 2014 to prepare a public performance for April 18 and 19, 2014 at the MC93 theater.

The show, the result of this work, was presented again, in an exceptional capacity and by the students’ will, in June 2014 at the Théâtre Fil de L’Eau in Pantin (Paris).

2013 | ONCE UPON A LIE…

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Although undeniable that we all have a sense of identity and are proud of ourselves, it is also true that time and again we leave our comfort zone: no, after all I won’t have chocolate ice-cream; in the end I didn’t get sick after five long hours stuck on traffic, in spite of being dead tired I didn’t sleep a wink. We are many things, we are made of many desires and wishes, we are of many colours, in short: we are peculiar.

But what comforts us in the middle of all the confusion, is knowing we are not alone. Rather we are in quite good company. Because even the charming princes and beautiful princesses have their own problems and quirkiness, the things that stay underneath, that they forget to share with the rest of us. Because they eat, make love, cut classes just like we do, they too have problems in expressing themselves or are as awkward as the rest of us, they too can’t reach the ATM machine, are sick from time to time, take pills, get motion sick in cars, quarrel with their siblings, fight in civil lawsuits, our knights in shining armour, our Cinderellas, Snow Whites, Little Mermaids, Thumbelinas and Red Riding Hoods have so much to tell, so much more we don’t know.

And that is the reason we need a show about all this. And the show is called… Once Upon a Lie

Following an invitation from the Pavilion of Knowledge in the context of its new exhibition Once Upon a Time… we decided to expose the other side of the characters. To see Alice and all our other fantastic friends on the other side of the mirror, revealing their intimacy.

Once Upon a Lie… will help us replying to those who repeat the usual spiel all the time: everything you say to me is fabulous, but it is just not right. I’ll tell you how it is!

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Along with the show Old Age, José Maria Vieira Mendes offers to discuss the play he wrote under the same name, as a pretext for a conversation on the relation between text and show or theatre and literature, and also of actors and writers, of prejudice and hegemonies, of freedoms and warranties, of feeling with money, of dictionaries and grammar, or births and deaths, or books and videoclips, of pencils and pens, of dichotomies and parataxis and so on.

This workshop follows the model of the series of workshops and activities Teatro Praga develops under the name Catechism.

2013 | ISAAC

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How can we perform a show about “animal rights” without being fondly paternalistic? How can we tell a story as ancient as the world, as essential as oxygen, without being boring? How can we talk about our civilizational inheritance, a legacy that passes on from parents to children and leads us to assume responsibilities about the world’s future? ISAAC’s plot aims to answer these questions, taking the form of one of Walt Disney’s older movies. It is a show that uses the classical to try and take a step forward. The story counts on three crucial contributions: each spectator will assume the role of Isaac. Pedro Penim will play the father. And Rita, our dog, will take the unexpected role of the sheep.

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In this proposal of the Teatro Praga, the Arabian “OneThousand and One Nights” are Tales of Kings which are worth gold but are exchanged ‘for nickels’.

Right in the middle of the Gulbenkian Gardens, four stories, told by two pairs of actors, guide the spectators by the narrative suggesting them and encouraging them to participate actively. After having formulated the narrative assumptions, having the characters been presented and the plot summarized with speed and simplicity, they transform the imagination into a theater and dress the spectators of heroes, enemies, thieves, princesses and monsters. With only a poster, a rug or a turban, the scenery is done with little, but everyone can get into the story, say the magic words and be Ali Baba, Aladdin and the Prince Bright. The proposal of the Theatre Prague is a game of discovery and representation that approaches the stories of those who hear them, turning the spectators into tellers.

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“The true hero is always a hero by mistake; he had the dream of becoming an honest coward like everyone else.” Umberto Eco

We started by choosing super-powers, our suits and new names for super-heroins. We took advantage of our biggest flaws: the invisible woman was the teenager nobody ever noticed and who learned that invisibility could be a super-power. We created our alter-egos and we got back at the times we were told “you are not allowed”, “you can’t do it” and “this is not for you”.

KILLER GIRLS is a Girl Power show, a catsuit party, a time-bomb. The countdown has started… We kill our fears “live”, we fight and run in high heels. We are not going to give up. This time, even if we are told this is not for us, we show you our middle finger, we stick our tongue out and we take it to the end. We are the boss now. Let’s party! KILLER GIRLS is a party and since it’s our party, we cry if we want to!

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What was the First Republic? How many where they? Who was it? During 16 years there were 7 Parliaments, 8 Presidents and 45 Governments.

It’s 1000000 years concentrated in 16. Living. Killing. Dynamite. It’s time for the overly. For the excessive. For speed. Stories after stories.

What if we resume the 16 years that seem like 1000000 in 60 minutes? What if we go beyond the speed of the Republic, of the revolution, the horses, the troops, the wars, the governments e parliaments, the birthdays and party rockets, what if we where faster than everyone and shuffle the order around, stop at the accessory and complicate the story?

We’re going to reject the linearity and make drawings, sketches. We’re going to explain the Republic without explain. We’re going to play ignorant teachers and swap the bomb wires. Nothing more to say, because everything will always stay to be told. Two actors, some props, a board to write on, some pictures to illustrate. Music and motion. We’re going to sweat.

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Jackson Pollock, American deep into the world: the ultimate elliptical incursion by the process of meteoric rise, fall and bounce of abstraction from that drunk was probably the greatest American painter of the twentieth century.

What is the importance of the accident in Western art?What is the importance of the West in accidental art?

In Granda Pinta [Jackson Pollock, (…) probably the greatest American painter of the twentieth century] you, little detective, you’ll be able to investigate the body of the works of the serial painter Jackson Pollock. Following the clues and formulating hypotheses, uncover at autopsy that the abstraction may not be more than a victim of “aesthetics materialization of the accident”…

Enlist yourself on our forces of elite and come to unravel this suspect theory.

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ANITA loves the mountain, the sea, the nature and she also likes to play with dolls. Anita is sociable, a loyal companion, a dynamic person, young and lovely. Anita is perfect.

Anita was born in 1954 but she’ll always be young and pretty and she never needs Botox or Prozac or moral support. ANITA always wears nice lingerie bought at petit bateau. And she has very expensive toys.

Anita is the best at everything, she always knows everything and she’s got the right attitude. Anita can do anything and does everything, because Anita has everything. And if she can do anything, then we can too, because Anita is the hero hidden inside every one of us.

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They live in the kingdom of Megalopsychia and they have different shapes. Their life as competitive spatial gladiators la a target: F (for Future). To get there, the Supernovas are always trying to bring down the monster/master… and frequently burning themselves. Although lay said they’re an endangered species, we hope they won’t give up. For further information lay MegalopsychoLandia™ and introduce the code L (Life) = 365 in your consoles.